At present, various devices are coupled to an information processing apparatus. Some information processing apparatuses include a mechanism that makes it possible, when a device malfunctions or in a like case, to easily replace the drive with an alternative device.
For example, a hot-swap method has been proposed which makes it possible, when expansion or withdrawal of a peripheral electronic circuit board is to be performed, to perform insertion or removal of the peripheral electronic circuit board without turning off the power supply to an apparatus in which the board is incorporated. According to the proposed hot-swap method, an instruction is issued from inputting means to suppress transfer of data from a control board to a peripheral electronic circuit board and place a data bus into a disabled state, and in this condition, a hot-swap of the peripheral electronic circuit board is performed.
Also an online maintenance method has been proposed in which, in the case where a board that occurs an obstacle is replaced by removal and insertion, the newly inserted board itself performs self-diagnosis and notifies the control board of a result of the self-diagnosis and the control board performs failure recovery confirmation based on the self-diagnosis result.
Also a logic card addition method for a common bus system has been proposed in which a plurality of logic cards including a logic card that serves as a bus master are coupled to a bus line in common on a back panel through a connector. According to the proposed addition method, the logic card that serves as the bus master detects that a new logic card is coupled to the common bus during system operation. Thus, the logic card serving as the bus master places bus requests issued from other logic cards including the logic card itself then the new logic card into a standby state and performs a test of the new logic card. Then, only in the case where it is confirmed that the new logic card is normal, the logic card serving as the bus master incorporates the new logic card into the common bus. Examples of the related art include Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. S62-14499, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. H7-28658, and Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2000-298628.
A device part newly coupled to an information processing apparatus sometimes occurs an initial failure. If a device part having some initial failure is incorporated into an information processing apparatus by a hot-replacement, an access error to the device part arising from the initial failure sometimes occurs during practical use of the information processing apparatus after the replacement of the device part, resulting in degradation of the performance of the information processing apparatus.
In this connection, it is conceivable, for example, that a self-diagnosis result of a newly inserted board is confirmed by a control board as in the proposal described above or that a logic card that becomes a bus master performs a test of a new logic card. However, in the method of the proposal, communication between the newly inserted board and the control board through the common bus or communication between the new logic card and the logic card that becomes a bus master occurs. Therefore, there is the possibility that the communication may have an influence on an existing device part. From the foregoing, preferably it is possible to suppress an obstacle when a hot-replacement of a device part is performed.